Sankarea Episode 10: The Many Dysfunctions of the Sanka Family (and the Hilarity that Ensues)

When stripped down to its broadest description, Sankarea is the tale of a girl trying to escape the yoke of her domineering, obsessive father through leaving the corporeal world and of a peculiar boy’s dream coming true in the most unlikely way possible. But depending on how jaded one is, it could also be seen as what would happen if somebody took their love for a moeblob too far; after all, Chihiro would still be longing for the faintly odorous, clammy embrace of the undead and Rea would have a pulse if her father wasn’t so focused on making her into the vomit-inducing spitting image of his deceased moe personification of a wife. So basically what I’m saying is that fated-to-die anime love interests are the root of all evil, and an indirect “Fuck you” to Key and Jun Maeda. Oh, and this episode deals heavily in the various pathologies of the Sanka family in a manner oddly reminiscent of the flashback episodes of Evangelion, so you know you’re in for a happy ride that’s not at all fuelled by alcoholism and crushed dreams of normalcy.

If the entirety of the prior paragraph and the last ten episodes of the show haven’t clued you in, the Sanka family is pretty fucked up at its core. It’s what Disneyworld would be like if it were represented by a stereotypically aristocratic family: Outwardly functioning as intended, but Mickey is secretly plotting to slit Goofy’s throat for embarrassing him in front of Minnie, and Princess Jasmine is drinking herself into a stupor while throwing overpriced churros at kidlings.

The show manages the rare feat of casting the family in a somewhat sympathetic light, but ultimately failing to make that sympathy stick when taking into account how utterly despicable they are as human beings. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not a failing on Sankarea’s part, at least as long as it intended for Rea’s parents to be detestable slime clad in their Sunday best. While the mother is a piece of work by herself, being the alcoholic product of neglect and unfulfilled desires, Rea’s father once again manages to outdo everyone else in the show with his depravity, to the extent that I’d consider him among the echelons of degeneracy inhabited by the likes of Gendo Ikari.

Back to my (at the time) throwaway mention of indirectly giving a “Fuck you” to Key, I see Danichiro as the natural progression of a Key protagonist after the love interest’s inevitable death, the potential extreme of idolization of that particular variation of the moe aesthetic. After Danichiro’s wife, someone who didn’t have much of a personality (just like Key girls) beyond her status as a wheelchair-bound soft-spoken sick girl, rolls off the mortal coil during childbirth, he pulls a Tomoya and lives several days/weeks/months on the brink of death due to excessive grief, neglecting his daughter and his health until brought back to the living world.

Unlike the standard “I just like this girl because she’s defenseless and shit, so shut up and cry you fucking peons” approach that Key protagonists usually take to romance, there’s actually a reasonable Freudian excuse for Danichiro’s otherwise baffling draw to this particular girl. Unlike those around him that wait on him hand and foot, treating him with as little humanity as he eventually ends up treating his daughter, she had the audacity to treat him like she would any other human being by criticizing his crass personality after a fencing tournament. That, and the fact that she wasn’t after his money, spurred him to marry her at the cost of guaranteed financial security. It isn’t the best of reasons, especially with how quickly he decides to propose to her, but it does make an iota of sense. At least that’s all I can think of as far as her attractive qualities go; she wasn’t exactly the most engaging individual from what we’ve seen.

Once he resumes his normal life, he marries to keep up appearances while slowly but surely grooming Rea to have identical qualities to those of his late wife—qualities that define that of the Key-brand of moe. He sought to keep her innocent and pure in his increasingly warped mind, the fact that he takes nude pictures of her each birthday even creepier for it. While it’s unclear if he actually lusts after his daughter because of her resemblances to her mother, the unhealthy degree of his fetishization regardless of its intent is plainly visible, as is his equally disturbing reason for keeping such a close eye on her.

Despite what I’ve said, I doubt that Sankarea is a dramatization of what would happen if an already mentally unsound Key protagonist lost his remaining shred of sanity and furiously defended the remaining bastion of moe in what he perceives to be his otherwise meaningless existence. I also doubt that it’s an indictment of those that feel the need to defend those cute, defenseless girls like Rea and her mother with a crusader-like fervor that’s ultimately more harmful than beneficial to all parties involved. And yes, it’s unlikely to also be a cautionary tale of a man whose obsessions ultimately distance him from reality to an even greater extent than his symbolic gloves ever could. But if it were this hypothetical anime, I’d say that these episodes focusing on the many dysfunctions Sanka family make it one of the best critiques of the culture that I’ve seen.

18 Responses

Specifically attributing the usage of the otherwise quite common “ill girl” trope specifically to Key and/or Jun Maeda, sounds like a case of small reference pools to me,

It’s like saying that Chaihayafuru characters wanting to “become a master” is a Pokemon reference.

Little Busters had a tomboyish Tsundere lead, Rewrite had a Rei-like Emotionless Girl, and Angel Beats had both. Other studios/authors have worse ratios. It’s not even like Key popularized the ill girl trope in the Utsuge/Nakige genres, that was done by Little Sister Kana, even before Air.

Admittedly, I was just going for hyperbole here. There were a lot of other factors, but it was Danichiro’s frail moe wife that unintentionally set the events into motion with her death.

It’s not the “ill girl” trope itself that bugged me, it was Danichiro’s interaction with her that specifically reminded me of that in Clannad, and to a lesser extent that in Air, (probably should’ve specified), something that I found irritating given how bereft of personality Nagisa was. Danichiro’s wife was pretty much a wheelchair-bound Nagisa, and he was a Tomoya that slowly but surely lost his sanity in his grief. Sankarea probably wasn’t pointing out how ridiculous that all was, but I thought it’d be interesting if it intended to match my interpretation.

And yeah, Jun Maeda doesn’t have an awful record, even if he does seem obsessed with sticking his female leads with fatal diseases and the mindsets of six year olds, but I saw this as Clannad with a few screws loose, whether it was intentional or not, and I loved this episode for it.

I wish there were a lot more shows that could draw genuine sympathy like Sankarea. Also, seeing how you constantly bash Clannad and Key in general (which I don’t mind) discourages me from watching Clannad at all. I’ll be taking your word for it~

Give Clannad a shot. Everybody but Nagisa, Sunohara and maybe Fuko is pure gold, and it has some very good episodes. Nagisa is just such a weak link that she ruins it whenever she has more than a few minutes of screen time… which kind of makes the events in After Story seem kind of inexplicable, but you’ll reach that bridge when you do.

Clannad is really hit or miss. I usually recommend Kanon to people new to key x KyoAni because it really epitomizes the storytelling aesthetic better. That said, Clannad at its core is completely simple and generic — it’s just embellished with flowery writing, good animation, and great music. Kyoto Animation has that knack for pulling shows like this off (e.g. Hyouka). I found Clannad enjoyable because I bought into the characters and their relationships with each other. It also helps that I really bought into the canon pairing, so the show became really enjoyable and compelling for me.

tl;dr the Key shows are what you make of them. If you end up liking the characters they become quite enjoyable.

I never really had a problem with most of the characters in Clannad, but it didn’t feel like Nagisa added much when I watched, which isn’t a good thing when she’s arguably the catalyst behind damn near everything not related to one of the side characters’ routes. After Story fell completely flat for me for just that reason.

I’ll give you points for trying to give this anime a purpose, but I think your grasping at straws. Whatever hope I had that this anime would end well disappeared about halfway through this episode.

I still don’t understand why they had to put zombies in this show as they haven’t contributed anything besides a weird fetish.

On top of that, all the characters have become nothing but awful stereotypes. Not despicable as you said above; that’s being way to generous. Even a good evil character has to have some thought put into him/her. They’re all just incredibly stupid with the most ridiculous motives that still haven’t been properly explained.

I’ll finish the last few episodes, but I have a feeling that this is only going to get worse.

Danichiro and Aria’s motives make sense. Danichiro’s been treated coldly his whole life, so having somebody not treat him like he’s put on a pedestal probably drove him into fits of glee. It’s understandable that the ensuing distant personality would make him alienate his second wife and his daughter, even as he tries to groom the latter to fit the image of his late wife. Grief can do a lot of damage to a person, so I’ll let it slide for being slightly contrived.

It also makes Rea’s reasoning hold water, seeing as living in that kind of oppressive environment would make anybody seek a way out. Even the zombie thing isn’t terribly out of place, as long as you just see it as Rea getting a second chance at life. I’d say that you’re not giving the show a fair shake, but your reasons are good for not liking it; I just see it differently and love what it is, and not just because it avoids the art style of the manga that really gets on my nerves for some reason.

I’ll give you Danichiro because his motives make sense even if they are twisted. I would even be able to give Rea some credit if the whole zombie thing wasn’t in the picture, but I don’t understand how Aria went from a cold, calculating gold digger to what she is now. Let’s be honest, Danichiro was never really bachelor of the year.

Speaking of which, the manga seems pretty popular all things considered. Have you read the manga? How do you think it compares to the anime?

I think it’s because Aria fell for Danichiro when caring for him during his grief-stricken spell, and the fact that he doesn’t return her feelings in any way other than a superficial marriage most likely led her to drink away her sorrows.

I haven’t read very much of the manga, admittedly, only about six or seven chapters. I liked the content well enough, but Chihiro was much more annoying, and something about the art style bothered me. Some problems with faffing about aside, I’m enjoying the anime much more.

Let me in on that Key bashing. Their soap story bothered me but most of all I still find the character design so bothersome. Why are their eyes so big yet their faces are so small? Clannad just bored me all the way through but with After Story there definitely were some strong parts but still flawed.

And I really appreciate your fantastic writeup on this anime not only that going extra miles to analyse the scenes and characters. Sure this anime is not perfect but still it’s a good entertainment with some subtle directions. I also feel that those who complain about this anime seemed to have already set their mind as nothing more than a zombie fanservice.

What I love about this anime is that it’s not afraid to tread the disturbing territory while the manga seemed to be lighthearted fluff when I checked out the chapter 1. Also I love the direction.

You’re bashing Key and Jun Maeda, and you’re still watching this tripe O_o. I think E Minor was pretty spot on, this is not the right show for such serious issues. I tried to give it a good go, I was really hopeful, but episode 5 was the killer. The tone is schizophrenic, the characterisation is a mess, and what interesting points there are are continually marred with god awful fanservice and dumb romantic “comedy”.

Regarding your entry on Furuya as a male lead, I am fairly certain Tomoya has more personality in any one episode of Clannad than Furuya has in this entire series.

I could write for ages on everything I think is wrong with what you said about Clannad, but I won’t bother, since I can understand why people wouldn’t like it. Despite it probably being my favourite show of all time, I recognise that it is also the most flawed show in my top 15 list, and I have plenty of issues with it, not least of which is character design, general moe aesthetic, and many other trappings from its visual novel heritage.

On a side note, quite like the blog. Nice to see someone coming from a more analytical angle than most.

I can definitely see where you’re coming from here. The romantic comedy elements of Sankarea don’t fit all too well, though I find them tolerable enough, but for some reason I think the darker, more serious side of it clicks. I’ll admit, I can’t quite put my finger on why, past the characters and their various problems all connecting in some way, shape, or form.

As for Clannad, I never could bring myself to hate it in its entirety. There are just elements that bug me to hell and back, to the point that no matter how good the rest of it is, I can’t look past my dislike of Nagisa and the jerky progression in her relationship with Tomoya. With that said, please debate what I said about it if you feel you have to. I encourage it, and I don’t want to be a bully by telling you that your opinion is wrong.

And as for liking the blog, thank you! Always does my heart good to see people enjoying what I write.

I can see where you’re coming from too. If it hadn’t been for the direction, and the darker elements, I probably wouldn’t have watched past the first episode. The show took me by surprise, and it’s certainly a cut above the usual rom-com dreck we’re treated to season to season.

However, it’s more than just how bad the fanservice and rom-com elements are that turned me away from Sankarea. The darker elements, while interesting, just don’t feel, well, genuine to me. For all the comments you made in this entry, as well as your entry on episode 4, suggesting Clannad’s whole aim was emotional manipulation, this feels ten times more calculating and manipulative to me.

Perhaps things have changed since episode 5, but I just don’t feel this series really cares about these issues. It feels like it’s just using them as a smokescreen for its trashiness. Interspercing trauma with absurd Wanko fanservice certainly doesn’t help, but it’s not the only culprit here. Danichiro is cartoonishly evil (no pun intended), backstory or no. I’m not saying things like this don’t happen, or that there aren’t people this horrible, but the show seems to relish in his sickness, and I’m just not interested in sadporn. I read ahead in the manga, and they intersperced Rea’s attempt to rescue Furuya with the maids freaking cosplaying her. How disrespectful to the subject matter can you get?

Regarding Clannad, I’d like to first say that I am in no way a big Key fanboy. I have not watched Kanon or Air, not are they particularly high on my to watch list, nor have I played any of Key’s visual novels, for that matter. The anime adaptation of Clannad is the only familiarity I have with them. I am a bit of a fan of Jun Maeda, ever since I found out that he played a big part in composing a lot of the music in Clannad as well as writing most of it, I’ve had a fair bit of respect for his artistic talents. He is cited as having put in about 75% of the work that went into Clannad himself, which I think is pretty impressive, even if you don’t like the visual novel itself.

I don’t particularly agree that Nagisa had no character, but I can’t say I was particularly fond of her anyway, so I won’t go any further with that one. I’ll happily admit that the romance elements weren’t particularly good, but they never really felt like the main point of the show to me, they were peripheral to the real core of the story, so I found it pretty easy to let their poor execution go. The only thing that really bugs me in whay you’ve said about Clannad is the implication that it has no ambitions, or that it’s only aim is poorly handled emotional manipulation, or moeness. To be honest, that pisses me off. I don’t mind people pissing all over mindless, unambitious, mass-produced crap that is clearly only produced to pander to the audience for increased profits, but I take issue to tearing down an artist’s honest attempt at a touching story. Clannad has heaps of issues, but lacking artistic integrity is certainly not one of them.

There was plenty of tragedy, but it always felt pointed to me. At its core, Clannad had some pretty serious themes it was pushing. The importance of family, the duality of hope and despair, how people deal with loss, the fragility of happiness etc etc etc. I never once felt like it used tragedy for its own sake, so to see people write things like “so shut up and cry you fucking peons” is pretty perplexing.

It takes a certain amount of ego to criticise artistic works, particularly when we often don’t even pay any money for them, and honest criticism is all well and good and healthy, but this seems pretty unnecessarily hate-filled to me. It’s one thing to point out a shows flaws, but it’s another to beat it down for no better reason than not particularly liking it.

Apologies for the mammoth post. I started writing and it just kept coming <_<.

What I wrote here was pretty hyperbolic, yeah. I don’t hate anything with enough passion to legitimately think like this, but I found Clannad’s execution to be shallow, and its artistic integrity to be buried underneath layers and layers of pandering emotional tripe that didn’t know effective transition for the life of it. It’s definitely there, but it’s tossed aside in favor of (what I felt were) pitiful attempts at giving the dull Nagisa some sympathy. I think that’s what bothered me more than anything, that it wanted me to feel for a character that I had no attachment to whatsoever, and whose relationship with Tomoya proceeded with little consistency. To awkwardly paraphrase Yahtzee, it’s like trying to make me feel sorry for a brick because its brick children don’t call anymore.

It’s not like there wasn’t any opportunity to make Nagisa likable, I just think they didn’t try.

As for Sankarea, I can see how it could be construed as just as disingenuous as I’ve made Clannad out to be, but it works because the characters are so unlikable. If it makes sense, seeing how they went from relative normalcy in Point A to their broken selves in Point B is far more fascinating than watching sad characters crying in the snow. It may not engage on an emotional level, but something about it rubs me the right way from a storytelling perspective.

Apologies for leaving a similarly long, (late) response, though I don’t at all mind addressing your points. And apologies for coming off as crass, Clannad just felt extremely calculated, and that’s never sat well with me. Again, thanks for commenting.

Commenting has been my pleasure. Thanks for seriously engaging and taking the time to reply.

I certainly wouldn’t disagree that Clannad had some execution issues, though I feel like the vast bulk of them were in the first series. I found After Story to be pretty flawless from the graduation onwards, but I don’t expect everyone to agree with me on that. I didn’t think it felt calculating at all, with a few exceptions, it felt really, really genuine to me, but if you did find it calculating, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I probably can’t understand where you’re coming from on this one any better than you can understand where I’m coming from.

More specifically, I find the point you made about garnering sympathy for Nagisa interesting. I’m not sure I ever felt sympathy for Nagisa, but I don’t think I ever felt like the show was trying to make me feel sympathy for her. One of the most unusual things about Clannad, and the thing I probably like most about it, was that it was actually a story about the protagonist, which I think is rare for a harem, as weird as that sounds.

Everything was measured in terms of how it affected Okazaki, or at least that’s how it came across to me. When Nagisa fell ill, then inevitably died, my sympathies went out to Tomoya, and in retrospect, that seems kind of weird, and your comment just made me realise that. I think that’s also why Nagisa’s lack of personality didn’t bother me, because I saw her as little more than a device pretty much from square one, but the consequences her existence had on Tomoya were powerful and poignant. I don’t actually really consider Clannad a romance, even if romance is a pretty big part of it. To me it’s one big coming of age story for Tomoya, and romance is just a piece of it, just like romance is just one piece of the grand tapestry of life. Everything is about his development, which is why the ending didn’t bother me, in fact I’m one of those genetic mutants who thought the ending was fucking spot on.

I hope you’d agree that Tomoya was a great character, and really well developed. He certainly carried the narrative.

On a largely unrelated note, I freaking love Yahtzee. You can find a quote for nearly any situation, especially since anime shares a lot with gaming’s general predicament and issues (young medium etc. etc.).

Re Sankarea, I can see how it could be more interesting from a socialogical perspective. The psychological issues certainly go deeper than Clannad did, however mishandled I feel they are.